“Unions, although they are created by and for their members, are not very democratic institutions.”
The New Unionism, Charles C. Heckscher, 1988.
The Employee Free Choice Act would disenfranchise workers faced with the choice of whether to join a union or not.
ASE believes absolutely in the right of every worker to choose to be represented by a union or not. But it is part of our mission to our member organizations, and part of our more than 100-year heritage, to advocate for the kinds of management practices and programs that make third-party agency unnecessary in the minds of employees.
The National Labor Relations Act, passed over seventy years ago, provides workers with a democratic process, built around the secret ballot, for determining whether a worker chooses to be a union member or not. The National Labor Relations Board oversees the process of union organization, and ensures that the choice for or against union membership, which will impact the worker’s very livelihood, can be made fairly and without coercive or threatening action by either union or employer.
Since organized labor’s heyday in the 1950s, its membership has steadily declined, for many different reasons. Today, only 7.5% of private-sector employees are organized, down from over 30% in the 1950s. Although unions continue to win over 50% of elections that are actually held, they fail to make any substantial gains in overall membership. Unions argue that employers use unfair tactics to intimidate workers into not voting in favor of a union. They argue further that the EFCA would change this by giving a worker’s public signature the power of the vote.
This signature, combined with other signatures so as to total 50% plus one of eligible workers, dictates for all workers that they are members of a union, as soon as the 50% plus one total is reached. Thus, workers who may not even have been asked to sign a card would now be members of the union. And the signatures themselves could be obtained by any method and at any time the organizer so chooses, outside of any system of control.
The EFCA eliminates the secret ballot election that protects a worker’s right to privately choose a union, or not, with a system that publicly discloses the individual’s choice to everyone—union members, fellow employees, and employers. The American Society of Employers believes that this ill-conceived legislation will not protect the worker’s rights but will do the opposite, by exposing the worker to threats, intimidation, coercion and other illegal and unethical tactics that can result when the secret ballot election is removed.
For these reasons and more, the American Society of Employers opposes passage of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The American Society of Employers believes any change to labor law should only occur when it does not take away a workers’ fundamental democratic right to vote for a union or not, in secret, and replaces it with an undemocratic practice that inevitably invites abuse.
Mary Corrado
President and CEO
The American Society of Employers